What does it mean to have a poem accepted for publication? Or to finally see your efforts in print, or as is most likely these days, online?
I ask myself these questions every so often, like when I receive another heartfelt rejection in the mail. I've kept a running tab of rejection slips from The New Yorker for about 30 years now--perhaps 25 of them. Is that all? Just 25 in 30 years? Well, maybe I'm not all that committed to seeing one of my poems in those famous pages after all. I mean, that's not even one submission a year, on average!
The other day, I received a message in my inbox that a poem was accepted for an upcoming issue of an online journal named War, Literature & the Arts, published at the US Air Force Academy. I had forgotten that I'd sent something to them--one of our Wednesdays@One projects, titled "Passage." My first thought was, oh no! Not a military magazine!? Why did I send THEM something? Am I that starved for attention? But I re-read some of the journal online and refreshed my memory why I thought it'd make a good home for this particular poem. It's not that, or just that, the subject of my poem (a descent into Hades alongside slain warriors) seemed to fit the editorial philosophy of the journal, but also the quality of the writing there is really quite good. In fact, an old friend, Bert Hedin had some work in a previous issue. I've always admired his work. The novelist Thom McGuane has published in those pages as well. So the company is good.
Which leads me back to my first question, what does it mean to have a poem accepted for publication? Validation for one thing. But validation of what, exactly? Of the poem in question, of course, that it was a valid and quality effort in the first place, as confirmed by the editors' choice. But also, maybe, of my self-image as a writer of poems, even as "poet." I spend a lot of time--I mean a LOT--writing poems, thinking about poems, writing about poetry, thinking about the craft, studying its history, keeping up to date with its latest trends and schools. And I want to be a writer of poems. As a brother once told a bemused business colleague of mine about my somewhat subversive pastime, "He's pretty serious about that stuff." So it is good when a poem is recognized, especially by people I don't know and will never meet, and who preside over a publication of quality work. I feel what's being validated isn't just the poem, but the commitment to writing poems altogether, to putting in the work and the study and weathering through the false starts.
A poetry friend recently sent me an S.O.S. for help with a chapbook she had written and was shopping around to various publishers. Rejected here, rejected there, rejected everywhere. She complained that the rejections bounced back so quickly that probably no one even read the submissions. What to do? Would I read the manuscript and offer some advice? Heretofore, all of her work had been self-published and marketed (such as through Lulu or Amazon), but no interest showed by "people I don't know and will never meet." I know exactly how she felt. No writer in my experience, especially among writers of poetry, has ever NOT felt that sting of rejection and questioned, at least for a few hours, why she puts in the effort. Shortly after I got my friend's S.O.S., and before I'd found time to look over the manuscript, she posted another message that the chapbook had been accepted by a fairly reputable press. Not the big New York publishing house she'd initially set her sights on, but a press with a decent stable of poetry writers all the same. The clouds parted, the skies cleared, the sun shone!
Let's face it. Much of what we do as writers of poetry is driven by ego. We want our voices, ideas and craft to be heard and recognized . . . and liked! We want our 👍's to far outweigh our 👎's. That's assuming we don't live in a cave and write on the walls by firelight. And we want those 👍's coming from people we don't know and will never meet. We want our poems to appear alongside the work of better known poets and work that we admire. We want the validation. We are creatures of want.
Do we care about the craft, the art of it? Of course! We made the choice to write poems. Wanting validation isn't a bad thing or a cheap thing. It drives us forward, or should. Not taking our cues from both 👍's and 👎's, NOT letting those signals encourage us to write better, with more resolve and commitment, THAT is a cheap thing.
And this is what I hope from my friend whose manuscript has just been accepted for publication, that she will take this as a sign that she is on the right track, and so will renew her commitment to the art and redouble her efforts to make better art tomorrow than she made today.
That is what I hope for my own writing. As a matter of fact, now that I've got myself all worked up over this publishing thing, I think I'll send a poem off to The New Yorker. 🙏
I ask myself these questions every so often, like when I receive another heartfelt rejection in the mail. I've kept a running tab of rejection slips from The New Yorker for about 30 years now--perhaps 25 of them. Is that all? Just 25 in 30 years? Well, maybe I'm not all that committed to seeing one of my poems in those famous pages after all. I mean, that's not even one submission a year, on average!
The other day, I received a message in my inbox that a poem was accepted for an upcoming issue of an online journal named War, Literature & the Arts, published at the US Air Force Academy. I had forgotten that I'd sent something to them--one of our Wednesdays@One projects, titled "Passage." My first thought was, oh no! Not a military magazine!? Why did I send THEM something? Am I that starved for attention? But I re-read some of the journal online and refreshed my memory why I thought it'd make a good home for this particular poem. It's not that, or just that, the subject of my poem (a descent into Hades alongside slain warriors) seemed to fit the editorial philosophy of the journal, but also the quality of the writing there is really quite good. In fact, an old friend, Bert Hedin had some work in a previous issue. I've always admired his work. The novelist Thom McGuane has published in those pages as well. So the company is good.
Which leads me back to my first question, what does it mean to have a poem accepted for publication? Validation for one thing. But validation of what, exactly? Of the poem in question, of course, that it was a valid and quality effort in the first place, as confirmed by the editors' choice. But also, maybe, of my self-image as a writer of poems, even as "poet." I spend a lot of time--I mean a LOT--writing poems, thinking about poems, writing about poetry, thinking about the craft, studying its history, keeping up to date with its latest trends and schools. And I want to be a writer of poems. As a brother once told a bemused business colleague of mine about my somewhat subversive pastime, "He's pretty serious about that stuff." So it is good when a poem is recognized, especially by people I don't know and will never meet, and who preside over a publication of quality work. I feel what's being validated isn't just the poem, but the commitment to writing poems altogether, to putting in the work and the study and weathering through the false starts.
A poetry friend recently sent me an S.O.S. for help with a chapbook she had written and was shopping around to various publishers. Rejected here, rejected there, rejected everywhere. She complained that the rejections bounced back so quickly that probably no one even read the submissions. What to do? Would I read the manuscript and offer some advice? Heretofore, all of her work had been self-published and marketed (such as through Lulu or Amazon), but no interest showed by "people I don't know and will never meet." I know exactly how she felt. No writer in my experience, especially among writers of poetry, has ever NOT felt that sting of rejection and questioned, at least for a few hours, why she puts in the effort. Shortly after I got my friend's S.O.S., and before I'd found time to look over the manuscript, she posted another message that the chapbook had been accepted by a fairly reputable press. Not the big New York publishing house she'd initially set her sights on, but a press with a decent stable of poetry writers all the same. The clouds parted, the skies cleared, the sun shone!
Let's face it. Much of what we do as writers of poetry is driven by ego. We want our voices, ideas and craft to be heard and recognized . . . and liked! We want our 👍's to far outweigh our 👎's. That's assuming we don't live in a cave and write on the walls by firelight. And we want those 👍's coming from people we don't know and will never meet. We want our poems to appear alongside the work of better known poets and work that we admire. We want the validation. We are creatures of want.
Do we care about the craft, the art of it? Of course! We made the choice to write poems. Wanting validation isn't a bad thing or a cheap thing. It drives us forward, or should. Not taking our cues from both 👍's and 👎's, NOT letting those signals encourage us to write better, with more resolve and commitment, THAT is a cheap thing.
And this is what I hope from my friend whose manuscript has just been accepted for publication, that she will take this as a sign that she is on the right track, and so will renew her commitment to the art and redouble her efforts to make better art tomorrow than she made today.
That is what I hope for my own writing. As a matter of fact, now that I've got myself all worked up over this publishing thing, I think I'll send a poem off to The New Yorker. 🙏
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